Citation

Kartez JD. J. Plann. Lit. 1991; 5(3): 226-237.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/088541229100500302

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Environmental planners must often attempt to manage participatory forums in which the policy issues pit individuals' self-interests against the need for collective cooperation. Psychologists investigate the nature of these social dilemmas both through formal models and in laboratory tests of individual choice behavior Planners have little empirical evidence from their own field on which to base assumptions about the basic processes motivating conflict or cooperation among different interests. Findings from the psychological research provide some insight into those motives and the conditions under which cooperation becomes more likely; for example, when communication about issues and knowledge about the impacts of noncooperation are both high. On the other hand, dilemmas researchers often assume away an important dimension of the problem--individual decisions to communicate about a conflict--by treating it as an exogenously controlled factor Changing that and other aspects of their research models will improve the usefulness of the results for practice.